Have you noticed how the media drive wedges into society and try to break communities up and instill fear into everyone.

I know the "truthers" on here are going to have a field day with this but bear with me.

How often in a given month are we told about something that causes cancer? How often are we told "facts" that are actually guesses? How many times is a summary or an estimate presented as the truth?

Its surprisingly often. The media is incredibly divisive. Its like they want us scared of everything and each other. Its like they plant seeds of paranoia in you and use inflammatory language to make threats seem bigger than they are.

I don't believe for a second that all teenagers want to knife me. I don't believe that all muslims are terrorists. I don't believe that MMR jabs cause autism. But the media would have you believe that every teenager has a machete and a taste for human flesh, every muslim wants to explode and as soon as a child sees the needle for MMR it starts babbling like Dustin Hoffman.

I don't believe theres that much to be scared of. Maybe i'm thick, maybe i'm not paranoid enough or maybe i've been lucky and nothing really dreadful has ever happened to me. What I do know is that the media isn't my friend. Or yours.

epiphany

14-03-2011, 15:30

People who have spent a good portion of their life studying the institutional behaviour of the mass media would agree with you - it's divisive, but at the same time the spectrum of debate it stimulates is very concise. They don't want people to see the "big picture" for a number of key reasons.

The most common way to keep a person under control is to keep them scared. To give a few examples, Bullies use fear to control their victims and piers, Wife beaters use fear to keep wife in check, employers use fear to keep employees in line and so on.

Governments use fear to control the public because without it, the public would be less impressionable and more likely to question and retaliate against their hidden agendas.

andygardener

14-03-2011, 20:41

The most common way to keep a person under control is to keep them scared. To give a few examples, Bullies use fear to control their victims and piers, Wife beaters use fear to keep wife in check, employers use fear to keep employees in line and so on.

Governments use fear to control the public because without it, the public would be less impressionable and more likely to question and retaliate against their hidden agendas.

I think that would be to confuse governmental desire to control with the reality of lazy journos.